Ben Witten was only six years old when he found an ancient Neanderthal hand ax. He had no idea what it was at the time. He was just playing on Shoreham Beach and pocketed what he thought was a nice shiny rock. Witten kept the rock for three years, until he visited the Worthing Museum with his parents and saw the Stone Age exhibition. The now-nine-year-old realized he owned something that could be dated back 40,000 to 60,000 years.
An artifact among pebbles
Looking back, the discovery was a benign event. “I was looking around and I saw this shiny flint rock,” said Ben. “I just thought it looked different to all the other different pebbles and stones.” He kept it in his room but was continuously “losing it and finding it”.
“Their best find in ten years”
So he was delighted to see museum staff admire the rock. “They said it’s their best find in ten years. Now it’s in a case in the museum. I was really excited, my heart was beating really fast,” he said.“I did want to keep it, but I felt like it would be better there than in my hands.”
His mother, Emma Witten, explained to BBC Radio that she also appreciates its new home. “Seeing how it lit up the face of the archaeologist at the museum, it’s great that others can enjoy it.”
A spokesperson from Worthing Museum stated that the hand ax comes from the Late Middle Palaeolithic era, which was around 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. “Ben found the flint ax in the upper shingle at Shoreham beach, so it is very difficult to say with confidence whether the ax was originally lost there or whether it was dredged up from offshore river deposits during work to strengthen the beach defences,” the spokesperson explained to BBC.
“An absolutely incredible find”
When the Wittens first reached out, James Sainsbury, curator of archaeology and social history at Worthing Theaters and Museum, didn’t think much about it. “I get emails like this all the time, especially about beach finds, and they’re usually just pebbles that look funny,” he said to Live Science. “But as soon as I saw the photo, I thought, ‘That’s an Upper Paleolithic Neanderthal hand ax.’ It’s an absolutely incredible find.”
An ax from the late Neanderthal period
Neanderthal hand axes are distinct because of their small size and dark, double-side flints. Neanderthals used this tool to break bones to suck out marrow along with other functions. Sainsbury further determined it to be a Mousterian hand ax, which means its from a “very late Neanderthal period”. Some experts believe these tools were made by one of the last generations of Neanderthals.
Rare Neanderthal artifacts
“As far as Sussex is concerned, it’s really quite rare,” Sainsbury said. “In our museum, we have one example and one only. They’re extremely rare because presumably the Neanderthal population density was very low.”
The Paleolithic Period is known for its rudimentary tools and cave art as well as carvings from stone, ivory, and bone, according to Britannica. The Mousterian culture is catagorized by their distinct construction of tools just like this hand ax.
Preserved underwater
On November 24th, the Wittens took the hand ax to the Worthing Museum, and Sainsbury confirmed its identity. He noted the artifact is especially unique because of how well-preserved it is. He suspects it stayed underwater where it stayed protected for thousands of years.
“It’s very unlikely it would have made it onto shore, at that height on the beach, without it being damaged,” he said. “So I think it was brought in with tons of shingles to increase the beach defenses either from the English Channel, where it would have been dredged from an old riverbed that’s now submerged, or from the North Sea, in the area of Doggerland.”
Doggerland is an area of land between the Netherlands and England before it sank about 8,000 years ago. Researchers work to uncover what this space looked like before it submerged, and they believe it was full of life. For now, Sainsbury and his colleagues are working to uncover when its last sediments washed up on Shoreham beach.
A future in archaeology
As for the ax’s founder, Ben seems to have a bright future when it comes to history and artifacts. “Ben is 9 now and really knew his stuff — his Bronze Age from his Iron Age from his Romans,” Sainsbury said. “He clearly has a real interest in archaeology.” Ben’s ax is currently on loan at the Worthing Theaters and Museum, and it will remain on display until February.
